Category Archives: Field Service

Work Order fields explained

Total Estimated Duration

Sum of all estimated durations coming from Work Order Incidents or Work Order Service Tasks.

First Arrived On

when the first technician arrived onsite / switched the status of a booking to In Progress. It looks at the Actual Arrival Time field of the Booking even if this Arrival Time got updated later.

If Bookings aren’t used the field can be updated manually.

Completed On

when the last booking was completed. If there are more than one bookings it should be the latest of all the bookings.

It looks at the End Time of the Booking combined with the Booking Status Completed.

If Bookings aren’t used the field can be updated manually. For example if you have subcontractors providing their data differently that through the Microsoft apps.

Closed On

When the System Status of the Work Order was switched to Closed – Posted.

System Status

This field should never be customized as it drived the whole Field Service process and has many implications and automatically triggering lots of Microsoft plugins..

System Status Posted

If you switch the System Status to Posted (formerly “Closed – Posted”) while there are still Scheduled Bookings, they will automatically be set to ‘Booking Status’.’Field Service Booking Status’ Canceled.

While having Bookings in Status In Progress it isn’t possible to switch the Work Order to Closed – Posted or Canceled.

Instructions

The content of this field is automatically pulled (copied) from the associated ‘Service Account’.’Work Order Instructions’.

It is good for general advice related to the customer like how to enter the building or other Service Account specific information.

Reported By Contact

Can be a Contact that doesn’t belong to the Account.

Is not being filled OOB from Case.Contact.

Support Contact

Lookup to Resource.

If using Remote Assist this should be used for the remote expert a technician should call when (s)he needs remote support.

Is not being filled OOB from Case.Contact.

Primary Contact, Email, Address Phone

The Primary Contact is part of an embedded Quick View Form, so you can’t edit it directly on the Work Order unless you would embed it via a Form Component Control.

It is the Service Account’s Primary Contact.

Sometimes a bit misleading are the Email and Address Phone fields in the Quick View. Those are data of the Service Account directly and not of the Primary Contact. In my opinion they could have been slightly renamed on the Quick view form to make that more transparent. Even more strange is that these fields on the Account Summary Card: Email (emailaddress1) and “Address Phone” (address1_telephone1) are per OOB installation not available on the Account form. So here is one of the “always to do customizations” [improve@microsoft] to somehow change the Quick View or at least put these fields onto the Account Form.

The Primary Contact of the Work Order is also used for the Info Card displayed on tap on the mobile app’s map pin:

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/mobile-powerapp-booking-maps

Price List

Prices for Work Order Products and Work Order Services are pulled out of this Price List. If Products don’t have a Price List Item in this Price List, then the Product.’List Price’ is used for the Work Order.

If the Billing Account (priority 1) has an associated Product Price List, this will be auto-populated (also if the Billing Account was determined by the Service Account).

If the Billing Account has no associated Price List, the System pulls the Price List from the Work Order Type (priority 2), also if the WO Type was determined by a chosen Incident Type.

Even if the you set the WO Type first and afterwards the Billing Account, the system is setting/keeping the price list with the highest priority.

Also even if a Price List was set first and then a Billing Account, the former Price List gets overwritten.

And by the way, the same logic works on the new Get Started=>Work Order Form, even if the Billing Account Lookup isn’t visible there OOB:

Create Incident Type

A new button in the command bar has been introduced with wave1 2021 which helps to create new Incident Types out of an existing Work Order.

Source: Microsoft, https://youtu.be/W4SKfynrjXU

Estimated Duration can be manually adjusted by removing the tick from “Copy Tasks”:

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Functional Location examined

  • to model out the location structure of a larger site
  • i.e. Building, Floor and Room on different levels
  • can also be used when not having a fixed location or location is frequently changing
  • Assets and Locations can easily be moved or reparented (drag n drop) if their location changes
  • Locations can be manually ordered by drag n drop
  • can be Physical or Functional location
  • available on mobile where technicians can add locations and assets
  • Address in Work Order gets updated according to the Functional Location Address, or if this is empty, the system searches across all Parents Location’s addresses (on more than one level!), and takes these if found
  • In Work Order form when first picking a Primary Incident Customer Asset, then the Functional Location gets auto-populated
  • After creating a Work Order, the Primary WO Incident will also be related to the Functional Location chosen in the WO
  • Creating a second WO Incident does NOT automatically relate the WO’s Functional Location to this 2nd WO Incident. Instead it can be manually set i.e. to another Functional Location (or create field mapping if you want it to be the same.)

Data Model of Functional Location

  • possibility to add individual address which automatically gets geo coded
  • 1:n Subgrids:
    • Customer Assets
    • Work Orders
    • Cases
    • Work Order Incidents
    • Agreement Booking Incidents
  • native N:N relationship to Account

So if a User would want to track Work Order Products, WO Services, WO Service Tasks on it, the Functional Location is NOT the best table to use. This brings us to the decision that a HVAC Unit and its components like Compressor, Fan, Thermostat… are better represented as Customer Asset than as Functional Locations (see screen above and note the different symbols for Location versus Asset).

Why N:N relationship to Account?

Imagine you have a big campus and you have different Service Accounts responsible for managing Work Orders of different typesbe .

Or a big construction site with different subcontractors working on the same Functional Locations and Assets.

=> This helps to be flexible enough to have those Locations used be more than one Service Account.

To keep in mind with hierarchies and lookup prefilters here

Functional Location lookup field on Work Order

When creating a Work Order the Functional Locations are prefiltered to those of the Service Account.

Note: Creating a new Asset from the hierarchical tree view f the Account form automatically adds the Account to the created Asset.
However creating a new Functional Location from the hierarchical tree view does ONLY automatically ad the Account to the created Location if that is on the highest level directly under the Account.

When adding a Functional Location to a Work Order after the Service Account has been filled in, only those Locations are suggested by the OOB Lookup View that have the Service Account directly related or related to one of the parent Locations (also over more than one hierarchy level).
However if you’re either removing the Parent Location on the Location form or if you remove the Service Account from the N:N subgrid of the highest level Location, then your Locations won’t be found by the Functional Location Lookup view on the Work Order or Case form anymore. You would need to click Change View and then guess which Location was the one you needed.

I personally think it would be more convenient if Microsoft would automatically add the Account to all levels of Functional Location when created from Account form, as it does for the Customer Asset [improve@microsoft]. A user could still delete the Account from the N:N subgrid if not needed.

Until than it could be solved by a custom cloud flow.

Primary Incident Customer Asset lookup field on Work Order

When creating a Work Order the Primary Incident Customer Asset lookup is prefiltered by the Functional Location chosen before, but only for the Assets that are directly related to the Functional Location via ‘Customer Asset’.’Functional Location’ lookup, not for the Child Assets of such an Asset. Why? The child assets do not automatically inherit the Functional Location of the Parent Asset.

With such a setup

With the hierarchy above you wouldn’t find any Asset when chosing Basement and you would still not find Monitor 1 when chosing Room 005. However you can click Change View and remove this flag and then be able to get a list of all Assets of the Service Account:

Depending on your use cases you could surely also solve this by a custom process (Workflow/Flow) that updates the Child Asset’s Location to the Parent Asset’s Location each time there’s a change in the Asset hierarchy.

Customer Asset Form

In a Microsoft Video there is a Customer Asset Form visible in a browser that contains the new Functional Location/Asset-Hierarchy-View:

I wasn’t able to find this form in my latest OOB installation until I found out that I need the Security Role Field Service – Resource to be able to see the form Customer Asset – Mobile (below screenshot). Being “just” System Admin is not enough to get this form provided ;-).

Tip: As stated somewhere else in relation to WO Products and WO Services already, if you’re customizing Field Service, make sure to also assign yourself the other Field Service Security Roles available OOB. System Admin role does NOT provide you access to all the forms used in Field Service [improve@microsoft].

Account form

Here it is to mention that only those Assets are visible in the new hierarchy control if one of the parent Functional Locations is related to the Account AND the Top-Level Asset (aka Master Asset) belongs to the Account.

This could also be a little bit improved [improve@microsoft] so that also Asset Hierarchies/Assets are visible that have no Functional Location related to the Account but where only one of the parent assets or at least the Asset itself is related to the Account.

So if you use this feature on the Account form make sure to always add your Functional Locations to all necessary Accounts (n:n) and remember that Assets only show up on the Account form if the Master Asset belongs to the account.

Also remember, that on the Asset Form you might get a better overview of how the Asset in embedded in the Location/Asset structure.

Self Scheduling Portal

In this new portal the Functional Location is displayed next to the affected Customer Asset for which you are Scheduling a Service Call/Technician:

Source: https://youtu.be/W4SKfynrjXU?list=PLLqieRfraDcoTcFSM8AbHmmNl8JbLRAU6&t=5291

Closing Words

Even if there are still some things to consider and improve, in general this is a very great addition to overall Field Service functionality as many Field Service organizations have a need for a deeper structuring of their locations. Servicing industry clients regularly needs more specific information for the field tech about where to go than simply the main Service Account address.

We even had a need to create graphical inhouse maps of floors and rooms to make transparent where exactly the work has to be done.

The much improved flexibility that comes with Functional Locations can be used for rental services or large machinery, which regularly change places (like construction machines, trains, ships, and similar).

Also I think the long standing problem of a Return & Repair process could be addressed with a Functional Location similar to a “Repair Warehouse”.

A great combination is the new ability to “Disable Customer Asset Validation” which turns off the necessity that a Customer Asset handled during a Work Order needs to belong to the Service Account of the Work Order.

More information:

18 Min. introduction Video by MS Field Service Team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCjyEKH0qFg

Our D365 Goddess Dian Taylor:
https://d365goddess.com/dynamics-365-2020-release-wave-2-part-4/

And of course Microsoft Docs (thanks to Dave Clark & Dan Gittler):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/assets-functional-location

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Knowledge Articles for Field Service

  • was available for a long time for Customer Service / Cases
  • now available for Field Service, also offline
  • rich text including pictures, hyperlinks etc.
  • Pictures aren’t available offline [improve@microsoft]

Directly available in Field Service menu now:

  • can be associated to Cases, Work Orders, Customer Assets, Products & Incident Types
  • Knowledge Articles are taken over from a Case into the Work Order, if the Work Order is created out of that Case
  • also if Knowledge Articles are associated with a Customer Asset and/or Incident Types, Knowledge Articles are automatically available at the Work Order

And remember: if you have a Portal, your Knowledge Base is thought to be exposed to your customer base from there as well.

Sources:

Microsoft: https://youtu.be/W4SKfynrjXU

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Mobile Offline Work Order Report

There is an OOB Work Order Report which can be generated even offline by the mobile application.

It contains the signature of the customer captured via the mobile device. The outcome is a PDF that can be attached to a Work Order.

It can also be sent out to a customer by email, however – of course – online is required for that mail.

Source: https://youtu.be/W4SKfynrjXU?list=PLLqieRfraDcoTcFSM8AbHmmNl8JbLRAU6&t=3861

To adjust the content an dformat of this Work Order Report (PDF Output) the sistem integrator has to adjust a PCF-Control using Visual Studio Code.

An alternative I think is still to use “kind of old school but proven” DocumentsCorePack (DCP) report (highly and easily customizable via MS Word) and let the report be generated when back online via the DCP-Server.

The big question, as this was a weakness in the former mobile signature process where the signature was stored as a picture file attachment within a Note, how does the new mobile app handle the storage of the signature…

It looks like it is stored as a base64 field directly on the Booking:

That means for tools like DCP (or Power Automate) that they have to “interpret” this file format if one wants to use these for a creating a report using the signature.

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New Schedule Board

Map

The map is now available an the new Schedule Board:

Zoom in:

The route of a single Resource can be shown.
Route of all Resources can also be shown.
Sequence of Bookings of a Resource can be displayed. as well as a tooltip info about a Resource on the map.

The map can show:

  • Unscheduled Work Orders
  • Scheduled Bookings
  • Current Locations of your Field Ressources
  • Organizational Units
  • Routes
  • Traffic
Like in old Schedule Board you can drag a route onto a Requirement to create a Booking for a job that is on the way.

Improved daily weekly and monthly view

See the Microsoft detailed explanation video from this spot (for around 5 Minutes):

Available now in new Schedule Board

Improved for jobs covering multiple days or weeks in viewing and editing of Bookings.

Pop up:

Booking can be edited by right click => Edit
Every day of a multiday booking can be adjusted separately.

Source

Microsoft, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4SKfynrjXU&list=PLLqieRfraDcoTcFSM8AbHmmNl8JbLRAU6&index=56

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Work Order Product and Work Order Service customizations

OOB Forms disappear

Attention! When customizing WO Product or WO Service form and do that how I sometimes do by creating own custom forms, you might stumble across the default forms not being visible anymore. That is because the default “Information” forms for both are only enabled for the following Security Roles:

  • Field Service – Administrator
  • Field Service – Dispatcher
  • Field Service – Inventory Purchase

What of course is strange and missing is the enablement for System Admin [improve@microsoft]!!

So what I recommend is as long as you’re customizing Field Service to assign your own User the Field Service – Administrator role additionally to System Admin.

Hide price and cost related fields

My “fastest” resolution has been to create a Hidden Tab and put all the unnecessary fields in it. This way you’re not getting in trouble when trying to remove fields that aren’t supposed to be removed from the form.

However I thing Microsoft is working on a general solution on how to disable pricing for Field Service in general because there have been so many customers not using pricing in Field Service but keeping it completely in their ERP.

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Appointment Sync from Outlook and Dynamics Appointments to Schedule Board

With Wave 1 2021 Microsoft has released a revised integration of Appointments into Resource Scheduling.

After setting ‘Scheduling Parameter’.’Include Appointments’ to Yes, you’ll see all Dataverse Appointments on your Schedule Board including their colored Appointments Status. And that in between your other Bookings coming from Work Orders or Custom Entities etc.:

Screenshot of the schedule board with appointments.
Source: Microsoft
  • Appointments that were tracked from Outlook
    “Dataverse appointments can also originate in Outlook, and be synced to Dynamics 365 if server-side synchronization has been set up. An Outlook appointment must be manually assigned the special Tracked to Dynamics 365 category so it appears as a Dataverse appointment record.”
  • Appointments from Service Calendar
  • CRM/Dataverse Appointments coming from Timeline or other Activity entries
    “Appointments will be visible on the new schedule board for the required attendees and the owner, as long as they are set up as bookable resources.”

Consider:

  • Appointments can’t be moved in Schedule Board
  • can be deactivated for certain Resources in ‘Bookable Resource’.’Include Appointments’
  • RSO respects the Appointments
  • Schedule Assistant (Find availability) will also respect it (coming wave 2 2021)
  • “Appointments marked private in Outlook will not show their subject on the schedule board”

Source & more information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/appointment-scheduling

Watch 7 min Video here:

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Customize the Schedule Board

To customize the Schedule Board has some special limitations but also a lot of possibilities.

Requirement Lists

This is one of the most wanted things to customize.
You can easily use all different kinds of Views from the Entity Resource Requirement on the Schedule Board.

  • System views as well as Personal Views (good for advanced Users customizing their own Schedule Board tab) can be displayed.

Booking Templates

Can be defined per Schedulable Entity.

Good reference here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/booking-template

Tooltips

  • displayed fields are defined by a View

Tooltips that are defined once across all Schedulable Entities:

  • Resource Map Pins: Resource Tooltips View
  • Organizational Unit Map Pins: Organizational Unit Tooltips View

Tooltips individual per Schedulable Entity:

  • Requirement Map Pins (here also personal view possible): Requirement Map Pin Tooltips View
  • Booking Map Pin or Booking Tile: Booking Tooltips View

Note: the Booking Tile’s Booking Tooltips View in the Daily/Weekly and Monthly View are not customizable as of now [improve@MS].

Details Pane

Sliding out from the right after selecting an item.

Views that are defined once across all Schedulable Entities:

  • Resource Map Pin or Resource Card: Resource Details View
  • Organizational Unit Map Pin: Organizational Unit Details View

Views individual per Schedulable Entity:

  • Booking Map Pin or Booking Tile: Booking Details View
  • Requirement Map Pin or Requirement from Requirements List (here also personal view possible): Requirement Details View

Map View filter

  • Requirement Map Filter View
  • Determines which Requirements (Requirement Map Pins) are shown on the map.
  • only the filter, not the columns matter
  • is independent of the Views on the Requirements Panel /Requirement Lists)
  • if Apply Territory Filter from Tab parameters (gearwheel symbol) is set to yes, ADDITIONALLY the Territories of the filter fields will be applied to sort out the displayed Requirement Map Pins

Other Adjustments

  • Increase Booking width (zoom in): slider at the bottom right. This is saved for the Schedule Board Tab (for all users).
  • remove columns from List View directly: only temporarily/local, not saved.
  • to hide certain bookings for example of Custom Entities from the Schedule Board has to be done by using the Field Service Booking Status Canceled for these Bookings and than setting this Status to be hidden.

Customization Tips

  • make default schedule board not editable per Security Role
  • if the setting for a Schedule Board Tab from 2nd gearwheel, upper right corner, should be saved, the User needs update privileges for this Schedule Board Settings entity record. Changes would be visible for all other Users of this tab as well than. More information: Shared vs. personal Schedule Board (by Microsoft).

Advanced Customization

Resource Cell

See here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/extending-schedule-boardif-i-can-do-you-too-scott-lefante/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/extend-schedule-board-custom-resource-attribute

Dynamically get the displayed date range and use it for count in Resource Cell:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/crm/2017/12/15/new-use-schedule-board-date-ranges-in-custom-queries-in-universal-resource-scheduling/

Custom Tab in Details area (left)

A Web Resource can be integrated on the right as Custom Tab:
https://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2016/08/01/advanced-customizations-for-the-custom-tab-in-the-field-service-schedule-board/

Query extentions / Filter Layout extentions

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/extend-schedule-board-custom-resource-attribute

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2017/10/16/blog-post-july-2017-update-for-field-service-and-project-service-automation-universal-resource-scheduling-part-1/?source=crm

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/common-scheduler/developer/extensibility-release-notes

Add a Sort By criteria

Get an insight into how to add a Sort By criteria by using the example of total available time. Also see how UFX works here.

https://community.dynamics.com/365/projectserviceautomation/b/dynamics-365-for-project-service-automation-blog/posts/how-to-sort-results-by-total-available-time-when-searching-for-resource-availability

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2017/12/15/sort-available-resources-by-total-available-time-in-universal-resource-scheduling/

Book-Button extention

https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/it/2017/07/14/dynamically-build-your-schedule-assistant-search-by-changing-the-url/

Custom Javascripts, CSS, and label localization on the Schedule Board

Create a new Client Extension record and associate it to the Schedule Board Setting record that contains your Schedule Board Tab or leave the Schedule Board Setting id field empty to have it affecting all Schedule Board Tabs .

https://community.dynamics.com/365/b/365teamblog/posts/july-2017-update-for-field-service-and-project-service-automation-universal-resource-scheduling-part-1

More information / sources:

6 tips for global versus local changes – Universal Resource Scheduling (by Microsoft)

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Microsoft Inspections

Installation

When trying to install the Preview of Microsoft’s Inspections by following this manual:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/field-service-preview

when executing the command from Step 5:

Get-CrmFlights -ApiUrl $url -Credential $cred

I got an error explaining that the module “Microsoft.Xrm.OnlineManagementAPI” could not be loaded. At line:1 char:1.

So I executed

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy AllSigned -Scope Process
which only allows an execution of signed scripts for this one PowerShell session.

Everything else worked fine and I got these solutions in the end:

Latest Field Service Version now: 8.8.28.50. Without Preview it was 8.8.23.24

Creating an Inspection questionnaire

Apart from some other data types you can use Entity Lookups:

For Number fields you can directly set a possible number range:

Files and Photos can be attached by users:

You can upload more than one attachments to the same File type question.

I like the way how Input place holder text can be provided:

Also the Other option is great. It shows a textbox only if the Other option was chosen (available for Dropdown, Checkbox and Radiogroup):

Great Preview functionality of the questionnaire is directly available from the editor:

Logic in Inspection Questionnaire

Basic Logic like show/hide or “make required” can be implemented:

Of course you can have more than one Logic definitions:

However what immediately came to my mind was the missing possibility to evaluate data input against other CDS/CRM data.

So let’s say I want to compare a date provided by the person filling in the questionnaire whith a date that is available on a Customer Asset record that is related to the Service Task or Questionnaire, how can we do that?

My first impression is that there is not yet any possibility like that available right now. It would be great if Microsoft can provide something similar to Workflows or Calculated Fields to provide some related record data here for display as well as for validation purposes [improve@Microsoft].

Even if you want to use the provided lookup for a logic it seems like you would need to provide a GUID since there’s no lookup in the Logic editor.

Also operators like “greater that” might not make any sense when comparing records/ GUIDs. So MS still needs to exclude them from possible options here [improve@Microsoft].

Service Task

Than you create your Service Task Type containing the Inspection questionnaire:

The questionnaire even gets displayed on the Service Task Type Form.

On your Work Order Service Task you’ll get another new field “Result”:

Also see the Clear Responses button in the ribbon bar. All responses are reset/deleted by clicking it.

Also the questionnnaire is displayed here and you can directly start filling it in here in your Browser.

Entity lookup: only records where the User has privileges for are displayed. Keep in mind: only “Name”-field of related record is displayed. Would be great if in future versions it can act like an usual lookup field in D365CE [imporve@microsoft].

Once published, an Inspection can’t be unpublished and edited anymore [however this is on Microsoft’s roadmap], but from the main menues Lnspection list you can highlight and than copy the Inspection and create a new version of it this way:

Mobile

In Mobile (Field Service Mobile Power App) it would look similar to this:

(Picture by Microsoft)
(Picture by Microsoft)

Microsoft’s Inpections als work on Resco based Field Service Mobile. To use it you have to donload a new Woodford Mobile Template, see/download from here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/inspections#perform-inspections-on-mobile

(Picture by Microsoft)

Run Power Automate Flows triggered by Inspection Responses

See here the video published by Microsoft, even if it is showing the deprecated D365 connector:

Roadmap

  • pages: allow to add your questions to an inspection “page” so that you can also skip whole pages
  • GA October 2020

Attention

According to Microsoft’s docs-article, Inspections cannot be exported and imported to other environments. Hope/expect that will improve as well [improve@Microsoft].

Sources / more information:

Articles by Dian Taylor (MVP) including Video recordings:

Manuals by Microsoft:

Installation manual (for preview version): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/field-service-preview

Comprehensive User manual including explanation of Power Automate triggered by Inspection responses: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/inspections

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Deprecation of Resco based Field Service Mobile App

Microsoft has announced the deprecation of the current Resco based Field Service Mobile App by June 2022.

From June 2021 on new Field Service setups have to use the new Field Service Mobile App which is fully made by Microsoft and in fact is a Model Driven App as we know it today.

The new App can be tested from Field Service Version 8.8.22.x onwards. In mobile App Stores (i.e. Google Playstore) the new app is called “Field Service Mobile (2020)” as of today.

There are some offline capabilities including sync filters already but it looks like offline logic implementation is not as easy and comprehensively possible as is it with the Resco based Field Service app. Also many other functionalities are currently missing, but Microsoft promises to catch up.

Some things that are still missing are: Push notifications, Geofencing and Location Auditing, Reporting, IoT Alerts, Remote Assist and MS Intune.

Interesting is also a new control called “Form Component Control”, which can be used to embed a Work Order form into a Booking form:

Will this be a general new feature which can be used for all other forms as well? – It looks like!

Resco will continue to evolve its Mobile Application Development Framework and will also continuously provide new features and mobile solutions. Resco already offers different mobile solutions and templates (i.e. an advanced Field Service template, Sales template, Route Planning, Inspections) that are working perfectly together with Dynamics 365 and will continue to do so after June 2022. That means by the time Microsoft catches up with current Resco technology there will be new functionality available for Users that stay with Resco as well. On the other hand also Microsoft is rapidly growing its Power Apps capabilities.

For now the direction to go would be for more sophisticated requirements and larger implementation projects Resco will probably be the better fit. For more simple / standard requirements Microsoft’s model drivel app could be worth to consider.

To sum that up – it will not be end of development for the excellent Resco Field Service mobile technology – it will rather be a separation between the Microsoft FS Mobile App and the Resco FS Mobile App. Of course we’ll eventually have to pay Resco separately if we want to use their enhanced solutions. But competition is generally good for the market and customer segmentation has always made sense.

Source and more information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/mobile-2020-power-platform

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FS Mobile: Remove Signature from Notes

On Resco for Dynamics or Field Service Mobile Client you by default have this (in my opinion unnecessary) Signature field on every Note form.

Note Form with Signature panel

So you might ask yourself why do you need the huge Signature area on each and every Note form. Usually it should be enough to capture Notes only on Work Orders and maybe for some special (custom) forms/processes. It confuses the End User if all he wants is adding an attachment or even only a text Note.

So what you can do is removing the Signature area by a simple On Can Execute rule on the Note form:

On Can Execute Command on Note form

After you have configured this you would not see the Signature panel on a Note form anymore and also not the Signature command from the upper right burger menu of the Note form.

Note Form without Signature panel
Note menu without Signature command

You can still configure one or more Signature sections for each of your forms as you already have it OOB on the Work Order form in FS Mobile.

Add Signature Tab to a Form

  1. in Woodford, go to Entity where you want to add the Signature
  2. click “Add Media”
  3. provide Name
  4. Select “Capture Signature” and “Clear”
  5. Optional: Provide “Required for Status”. Example: Status “Approved” only possible with Signature
  6. Subject: Title of the Note

Similarly you can apply this for Photos, Videos, Files, … You could also have one Tab for Signature capturing and another Tab for Photo and/or Video capturing. Or collect multiple Signatures on one form by having different Tabs for that.

More information & sources

More details/inspirational source of how to add a Signature to a Form:
https://red365ce.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/resco-mobilecrm-adding-a-digital-signature-to-forms/

For more information about On Can Execute, which enables you to conditionally hide or show commands/buttons in the upper right corner of forms, see here:
https://www.resco.net/woodford-user-guide/#__RefHeading__5865_1627906509

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Standard Setup Tasks Field Service Mobile

Always, when I setup a new Field Service Mobile, there are some steps I go through to ensure, everything is initially working in a comfortable manner.

Surely some of the steps aren’t required but have proven to be my best practice for new instances.

  1. create Resources and ensure that they are enabled for FS Mobile
  2. install Woodford
  3. install the latest Project Template from here and make a derivate out of it in which you perform all following mobile customizations
  4. in Woodford, go to plugins and activate the most important Delete plugins: Work Order, WO Product, WO Service, WO Service Task, …
  5. in your Project Template derivate, go to Configuration and set Save Password to true

6. edit the Sync Filters to also include data from the past (1-2 weeks) for: Work Order, WO Product, WO Service Task, WO Service, WO Incident, Resource Booking.

7. switch the default Booking View Layout from Calendar to List. To do so, go to Home=>Bookable Resource Bookings=>Properties=>Properties=>Initial Control=>switch from Calendar to List

8. activate your 30-days Trial of Woodford here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/field-service/activate-fs-mobile-app-license

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Embed Forms Pro Survey into Field Service Mobile

Here is a nice article by Thomas Dayman that gives a short overview of how to embed a Survey Questionnaire created with the new Microsoft Forms Pro into the Field Service Mobile app.
The approach is to create an Offline HTML file where Thomas provides a sample code snippet for, and embed that via iFrame into a Form in Woodford.

Compared to Resco’s new Inspections the Forms Pro integration doesn’t support offline scenarios. Resco Inspections comes with additional licence cost whereas for Forms Pro it is still not clear how the licencing will look like.

Microsoft Forms Pro embedded in Field Service Mobile
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Activate CE Field Mappings in Field Service Mobile

Say you add the Contact subgrid into your Account form on Field Service Mobile because you’re expecting your Field Agents to also capture new Contacts and they are first searching for the Account first instead of adding the Contacts directly from Home=>Contacts.

Now if you tab on “+” at the top of the Contacts subgrid on the Account form the “New” form for Contacts opens.

And now the difference here is: if you leave the setting from below in its standard configuration as it comes out of the box, your address fields will stay empty so that for the new Contact you have to fill everything in manually.

But if you change the setting “Use Entity & Attribute Map” to “true”, the address fields on a new Contact form are automatically populated from the same fields on the Account form were you had started your journey.

Resco Field Mapping
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